.

Under the laws which the colleges and their clique seek to establish,
Priessnitz could never have introduced hydropathy, Pasteur could not
have inoculated for hydrophobia without danger of imprisonment, and
the great American Medical Reformation, which abolished the lancet and
mercurial practice, and which is now represented by seven colleges,
would have been strangled at its birth, for its primitive origin was
outside of college authority. There are other great ideas, great
discoveries, great reforms, not yet strong enough to be embodied in
colleges, which medical legislation is designed to suppress, to
enforce a creedal uniformity.

Another piece of legislative quackery is revealed in the action of
Congress as stated in the following paragraph concerning "a new
bureau."

"One of the acts of the retiring Congress has not been noted so far,
but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of
subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the
country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which
allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor "for the
collection of statistics of and relating to marriage and divorce in
the several states and territories, and in the District of Columbia."
This gives the opportunity, which has heretofore not existed, to
obtain reasonably accurate statistics of what is going on as concerns
the integrity of the family throughout the whole country. This will be
a department under Col. Wright, in the work of the bureau of labor,
and is one of the results of persistent work which the National
Divorce League has done, under the direction of its secretary, Rev. S.
W. Dike. Col. Wright has already formulated plans which are likely to
make this new branch of the labor bureau the channel for one of the
most valuable reports which have yet come from his hands. It will be
the gathering of facts whose study will suggest wise legislation in
the future."

It may not be absolutely unconstitutional for Congress to collect such
statistics, but it is contrary to the spirit of the constitution.
Congress has nothing whatever to do with such social questions, which
are exclusively matters of state legislation. It has allowed itself to
be made a cat's paw by the National Divorce League for its
retrogressive policy. The welfare of society is deeply concerned in
breaking up all unhappy, discordant marriages, which are simply
nurseries of misery a